The Studio Akiva
Guides
Twelve practical handbooks on designing, renovating and living well in a home. Specific, tested and honest, including the places where the popular advice does not hold up.
Start from the problem,
not the title.
Most people arrive with a situation rather than a subject. Find yours below, then browse the range underneath.
| I am thinking about a renovation but have not committed | Start with Vol. 01 to work out what is worth doing, then Vol. 02 to deliver it. |
| I am mid-build and it feels chaotic | Vol. 02, and start at Chapter 6. The money sheet and weekly rhythm can be introduced at any point. |
| I cannot choose a paint colour | Vol. 03. It is a method rather than a list of shades, and Chapter 5 explains why the same colour looks wrong in your room. |
| My kitchen or desk is uncomfortable and I do not know why | Vol. 04. It is almost certainly a height set for the wrong person, and Chapter 11 is a weekend audit you can run yourself. |
| I am redoing a bathroom | Vol. 05, before you buy anything. Chapter 4 alone will stop you buying the wrong shower. |
| I want to design a whole home properly | Vol. 06, which is the full arc, then dip into Vol. 03, Vol. 04 and Vol. 05 as each decision arrives. |
| I am designing a room for a child | Vol. 07, covering nursery through to teenager, including safety to current standards. |
| I am replacing or refitting a kitchen | Vol. 08, and before you visit a showroom. Chapter 5 sets the national extract rates side by side, which is the decision most kitchens get wrong. |
| I am furnishing and do not know what to buy first | Vol. 09, before you order anything. Chapter 7 is about measuring the route in, not just the room, which is where most sofas fail. |
| I rent and cannot change much | Vol. 10, ideally before you sign. Chapter 2 is the handover inventory that decides whether your deposit comes back. |
| I work from home and the room does not work | Vol. 11. Start with Chapter 3: most home offices are lit to a third of what screen work needs. |
| The two of us cannot agree on anything | Vol. 12, read together before either of you looks at a product. Chapter 7 is the one to reach for when you are stuck. |
Every guide is filed under the rooms and subjects it covers. Pick one to see only those guides, or take three or four together as a set.
Not every euro spent comes back. Some renovation money returns more than it cost, some returns most of it, and some is simply spent. Knowing which is which before you commit is the entire subject of this guide.
Maximising Your Renovation Investment is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It gives you honest figures rather than encouraging ones, including the places where the popular claims do not survive contact with the research. It opens with the distinction almost nobody makes before they start: the difference between work that adds value, work that adds saleability, and work that simply makes a house better to live in. All three are legitimate reasons to spend. Confusing them is how people end up disappointed.
Then the two ideas that matter more than any list of improvements. Value is set by comparison, not by cost, which is why your invoices are irrelevant to a valuer. And every street has a ceiling price above which buyers will not go, whatever you do to the house. There is a fifteen minute exercise here, using publicly available sold price data, that tells you the maximum your work could ever add before you commit a penny.
After that: an honest ranking of returns with the caveats the headlines leave out, which kind of added space actually counts and what makes a loft room a bedroom rather than an attic, kitchens and bathrooms and why recovery falls sharply as spend rises, first impressions, and the works that actively reduce what a property is worth.
The energy efficiency chapter is the one most likely to change how you spend. EU edition: it works through the evidence across member states under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, where the same pattern appears.
It finishes with costing and funding, the difference between renovating to sell and renovating to live, and how to evidence the value you create so that a buyer's solicitor cannot discount it.
A note on what this is: we are interior designers, not valuers or financial advisers, and nothing here is financial advice. Every figure is a typical range drawn from published research, given so you can sanity-check a proposal rather than forecast your own outcome.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
Most renovations do not fail on the building work. They fail on decisions made late, money tracked loosely, and expectations nobody wrote down. The bricklaying is usually fine. The managing is where projects come apart.
Renovation Project Management is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva, written for homeowners rather than professionals. It assumes you have a job to hold down while all this is happening, and that nobody has ever explained how a building project is actually shaped.
It starts with the scope, because everything downstream inherits its clarity, and shows you how to write one a builder can price without phoning to ask what you meant. Then choosing a team, reading a quote properly, and the conversation that tells you more than any reference. Then contracts: what the document must state, how retention works, how to pay safely, and what insurance to verify before anyone starts.
EU edition: Written around national contract forms, Directive 92/57/EEC safety coordination and local building inspectorates, with prices in euros.
The middle chapters are about running a live project: the critical path and the lead times that quietly wreck programmes, a five-column money sheet that catches overruns while you still have options, and the four habits that prevent most renovation misery. A weekly meeting. A written summary. A decision log. Variations priced before the work happens.
There are also the chapters nobody writes. Living on site, and how to decide whether to. The low point in the middle that everyone hits and nobody warns you about. Neighbours. And what to actually do when a project is going seriously wrong, including the three kinds of delay and who properly carries each one.
It finishes with snagging done properly, the handover pack to insist on, and what to do in the first year so the work ages well and the eventual sale is straightforward.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
Your child's bedroom has more work to do than any other room in the house. It is where they sleep, play, make a mess, do their homework, hide from the world and slowly become themselves. This guide shows you how to design a room that does all of it well, and keeps doing it as they grow.
Creative Kids' Room Design is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It takes you from first idea to finished room across eleven chapters: zoning a space for play, choosing a palette that helps children settle, planning a room age by age from nursery to teenage retreat, buying furniture that survives being climbed on, layering light for play, study and sleep, and making the room genuinely safe.
There are chapters most guides skip. How to make a box room or a shared room work. How to design for a child who feels the world at full volume. How to build a study zone that gets used. How to do all of it on a sensible budget, with second-hand finds and a paint brush.
EU edition: Safety guidance is written to European standards throughout, including EN 13120 for blind cords, EN 716 for cots and EN 747 for bunk and high beds.
Every chapter ends with something you can act on: checklists, comparison tables, a 15-minute safety audit and a printable Room Planner worksheet that pulls your whole scheme onto a single sheet.
Written for real families with real budgets. No jargon, no styling that falls apart the moment a child actually uses the room.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
Most home offices were never designed at all. They accumulated: a desk, then a second screen, then a chair borrowed from the dining table, until it became the room you spend more waking hours in than any other.
The Home Office Guide is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It starts from scratch: which room, and why the obvious choice is often the wrong one; the three pieces of equipment that decide whether your back hurts; and how to light a screen properly, which almost nobody does.
It works to real numbers. Desks dimensioned to EN 527-1: 740mm fixed height and 650mm of clear knee space, which drawer pedestals routinely break. Task lighting to EN 12464-1: 500 lux on the desk, against the 100 to 200 a typical domestic pendant delivers. Eight to ten sockets for a working desk, in rooms that usually have two.
Then the problems people actually have. Sound leaking under the door, the cold spare room, the video call, the desk in the bedroom, and two people on calls in one room. And the garden office, with what you are allowed to build set out country by country, because the popular idea that a small one never needs a permit does not survive most German Land codes.
EU edition: Germany, France and the Netherlands side by side wherever the rules differ, on garden office permits, who may do electrical work, and how a home office is treated for tax. Studio Akiva are interior designers, not tax advisers or lawyers, and the guide says so where it matters.
It ends with an honest chapter on what you can do yourself and where paying someone is worth it, and a Workspace Planner to fill in before you buy anything.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase.
Colour reaches people before anything else in a room. Before the furniture, before the layout, before they have consciously registered anything at all. Which is why getting it wrong is so expensive, and getting it right feels like the room was always meant to look that way.
Harnessing Colour is a 36-page illustrated guide from award-winning studio Akiva. It is not a list of nice shades. It is a method.
You will learn what colour is actually made of, and why hue, the dimension everyone talks about, is the least powerful of the three. You will learn to read Light Reflectance Value, the most useful number in decorating and the one hiding in the small print of every colour card. You will learn why your perfect white looks dirty next to the sofa, and the three ways to find an undertone before it ruins a scheme.
There is a chapter on what the research into colour and mood genuinely supports, and where popular advice runs well past the evidence. Saturation drives arousal more than hue does. Very dark rooms raise heart rate rather than lowering it. These are useful things to know before you paint a bedroom black.
Then the practical half: north, south, east and west-facing rooms and what each does to a colour, room by room guidance, using value to lower a ceiling or shorten a corridor, the full sheen scale from matt to gloss, colour drenching and feature walls that actually work, what dates and what lasts, and a sample board method that takes an evening and prevents a weekend of repainting.
Every chapter ends with something you can act on: comparison tables, checklists, worked palettes and a printable Palette Planner with space for LRV, undertone, finishes and a testing log.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
One edition: Colour behaves the same everywhere, so unlike our renovation guides there is no separate UK and EU version. The orientation guidance is written for the northern hemisphere and simply reverses below the equator.
Every home you have ever admired got that way the same way: through a sequence of good decisions made in the right order. This handbook gives you that sequence.
The Interior Design Handbook is a 36-page illustrated guide from award-winning studio Akiva. It covers the full arc of a project across eleven chapters: defining what you actually want, setting a budget that survives contact with reality, choosing and managing the right professionals, planning layouts that flow, and layering colour, light, texture and furniture into rooms that feel inevitable.
It is specific where most advice is vague. Ninety centimetres for a main walkway. Ten per cent contingency, fifteen for an older property. Two thirds of the sofa's length for a coffee table. Seventy-five to ninety centimetres above the table for a pendant. Warm white at 2700K for every living space. The numbers you need are here, in tables you will come back to.
There are also the chapters most guides skip: sustainable and healthy material choices, smart home technology worth wiring in, and universal design that quietly future-proofs a home for every age and ability.
EU edition: Written around national building regulations and their European equivalents, with prices in euros.
Every chapter ends with something you can act on: comparison tables, checklists, a clearances reference and a printable Project Planner that pulls the whole scheme onto a single sheet.
Whether you are refreshing one room or renovating a whole house, the process is the same, and it is entirely learnable.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
Most advice about homes assumes you own one. Almost none of it survives a rented flat in Berlin, Paris or Madrid, where what you are given, what you may change and what you must put back are all decided by somebody else, and decided differently in each country.
The Rented Home is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva, written for the person who has just arrived. It starts before you sign, because that is where most of the expensive decisions are made, and it ends with the deposit, because that is where they are paid for.
In between, the empty flat. The German let with no kitchen at all, just connections on a bare wall, and what a basic one costs to fit. The bare ceiling cable where a light should be, and the four layers of light that need no electrician. Floors you can cover without damaging them, windows you can dress without a drill, and storage that leaves with you.
And the rules, set side by side rather than averaged. A German Kaution capped at three months' cold rent under § 551 BGB, and legitimately held for up to six months while the service charge account is settled. A French dépôt de garantie of one month unfurnished or two furnished, and the statutory list of eleven items a furnished let must contain. A Spanish fianza of one month, lodged with the regional housing body and due back within thirty days of the keys. The 2015 Federal Court of Justice ruling that can make a German cosmetic repairs clause invalid. And what German courts have actually held a landlord can demand of you on airing, which is less than most tenants are told.
EU edition: Germany, France and Spain compared chapter by chapter, with every rule named so you can look it up. Prices in euros. Studio Akiva are interior designers, not lawyers, and where a dispute is genuinely live the guide sends you to the right tenants' association.
Every chapter ends in something you can act on, including a planner to fill in on the day you get the keys and a four-week countdown to handing them back.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase.
Rooms should fit the people in them, not the other way around. Yet most homes ask their occupants to stoop at the worktop, perch on the sofa, squint at the screen and edge past the dining chairs, and everyone simply adapts until the discomfort becomes invisible.
Ergonomics in Interior Design is a 36-page illustrated guide from award-winning studio Akiva. It gathers the dimensions that matter for a home, explains where they come from, and shows you how to apply them room by room.
It starts with why standard sizes exist and where they fail. Most furniture is built for roughly the 5th to 95th percentile, which means about one person in ten is poorly served, and because nobody sits at the same percentile for every measurement, a chair that fits most people on seat height can still fail them on depth. From that follows the rule the whole guide runs on: design clearances for the largest user and reach for the smallest.
Then six measurements you can take of your own household in ten minutes, which will change what you specify. Elbow height determines nearly every work surface in the house. Buttock to popliteal length decides whether a sofa supports your back or defeats it.
After that it is room by room, with the dimensions gathered into tables you can work from. Why kitchen worktops should be set from an elbow rather than a catalogue, and why sinks should sit higher than the rest of the run. Desk and screen heights, the laptop problem, and what to do when your desk is actually a dining table. Seating that lets your feet reach the floor. Bathroom heights, bedroom clearances, stair consistency and door widths. Light levels by task, and how much more light a person needs at sixty than at twenty.
The final chapter is a weekend audit of your own home, with a tape measure and this guide, sorted into free fixes, small purchases and the handful of things only possible at build stage. Most of what you find will cost nothing.
One edition: Human bodies are the same everywhere, so unlike our renovation guides there is no separate UK and EU version. All dimensions are metric.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
A kitchen is the largest single spend in most renovations, and almost none of what goes wrong is about taste. It is about the order things happen in, and about decisions taken too late to be free.
The Kitchen Renovation Guide is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It follows the job in the order it actually happens, so you know what has to be decided before the plasterboard goes on.
It starts with the eight things to establish before you buy anything: where the waste runs, what the floor is made of, your water pressure, whether there is a duct route, whether your consumer unit has spare ways. Then budget and programme, with a stage-by-stage timeline and the reasons kitchens overrun.
The technical core is where this guide earns its place. Clearances in millimetres. Zones rather than the work triangle, which was designed for a 1940s kitchen and does not survive an island. Waste falls and flow rates. Why an induction hob needs its own high-current circuit.
And extraction explained properly, which is where most European guides go vague. There is no single European figure: Germany asks for 60 m³/h with a hood under DIN 1946-6, France between 45 and 135 depending on the size of the dwelling, the Netherlands 21 litres per second. The guide sets them side by side so you can find yours, and explains why a recirculating hood counts towards none of them.
Then the enjoyable part. What you are actually paying for in cabinetry, and why hinges and runners matter more than doors. Worktops compared by the linear metre on price, durability and heat. Appliances, and why choosing them after first fix is the most expensive ordering mistake in a kitchen. Lighting a room that is a workshop at seven in the morning and a dining room at eight at night.
EU edition: written around national extract rates, IEC 60364 and your member state's wiring rules, with costs anchored on German figures and prices in euros.
Every chapter ends in something you can act on, including a full snagging list and a printable Kitchen Planner your fitter, electrician and plumber will all want to see.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase.
Two people. One house. A thousand decisions. Almost every couple we work with believes they are the difficult one. They are not. Designing a home together is one of the few projects in a shared life that demands hundreds of aesthetic judgements, in public, against a deadline, with money attached to each one.
The Deciding Together Guide is a 36-page handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It is not about learning to like the same things. It is about building a process good enough that your differences produce a better house rather than a stalled one.
It starts with why you disagree, which is usually less about taste than it looks: vocabulary, priority or control, each with a different remedy. Then the practical machinery. A separate boards exercise that replaces adjectives with images. A one-page brief you both sign, with three non-negotiables each. Whole categories of decision owned outright rather than halved, three vetoes each, and budget used as a neutral arbiter rather than a weapon.
And the chapter most of the guide exists for: where the standard advice to meet in the middle actively damages a house. Split the difference on forty decisions and you arrive at the house nobody chose. The negotiation research says trading whole decisions leaves both of you better off, and the guide shows how to do it.
EU edition: colour references in RAL and NCS, the systems most European manufacturers publish against, and late changes under § 650b BGB for German projects. The survey figures come from the 2025 UK and US Houzz reports, the only published studies of their kind, and are presented as the shape of the problem rather than as local statistics. It is a guide to design decisions, not relationship counselling, and says so.
It ends with an Agreement Worksheet to fill in together and hand to whoever is designing or building.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase.
A bathroom is the only room where water, electricity, ventilation and drainage all meet in about four square metres, and where a small mistake stays hidden behind tile until it becomes an expensive one.
The Bathroom Renovation Guide is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It follows the job in the order it actually happens, so you know what has to be decided before the walls close.
It starts with the seven things to establish before you buy anything: where the soil stack is, what the floor is made of, your water system and measured flow rate, the ceiling void, existing ventilation and what is hiding behind the current tiles. Then budget and programme, with a realistic stage-by-stage timeline and the reasons bathrooms overrun.
The technical core is where this guide earns its place. Layout clearances in centimetres. Combi, unvented and gravity systems compared, and how to match a shower to your actual flow rate rather than the brochure. Waterproofing explained properly, including floor falls, substrates and the single-manufacturer rule that prevents most failures. Electrical zones and IP ratings. Extract rates, duct runs and fan overrun.
EU edition: Written around IEC 60364-7-701 and national building and ventilation regulations, with prices in euros.
Then the enjoyable part: tiles and stone compared, sanitary ware and brassware and what is genuinely worth paying for, lighting that flatters a face rather than shadowing it, small bathroom and en-suite strategy, and a final chapter on snagging, care, and what fails first in a bathroom and why.
Every chapter ends with something you can act on, including a full snagging checklist and a printable Bathroom Planner that your plumber, tiler and electrician will all want to see.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase. Read on any device or print at home.
Most furniture mistakes are timing mistakes. The piece was right and the room was right. What went wrong was when it was ordered, or what was left in the budget by the time it came to buy it.
Furniture Budgeting and Sequencing is a 36-page illustrated handbook from award-winning studio Akiva. It covers the two things nobody enjoys planning and everybody regrets skipping: where the money goes, and when things have to be ordered so they arrive at the right moment.
It starts with what a room actually costs, then the sixty, twenty-five, fifteen split that designers work to, and why one contingency is never enough. A construction contingency is spent early, when the walls come down. A furnishing contingency is needed months later, when the sofa arrives damaged. Merge them into one pot and the second is already gone by the time you need it.
Then time. Real European lead times, category by category. German trade reports eight to ten weeks as the normal range for a made to order sofa, and ten to eighteen if you choose a fabric outside the maker's standard collection. Factory shutdowns across July and August are entirely predictable and are almost never mentioned when you are quoted a date.
And the chapter that saves the most money, which is about doorways. European internal doors are narrower than almost every furniture guide assumes, and the number that matters is the clear passage, not the leaf. German doors follow DIN 18101, and the frame takes about 41mm off each leaf, so the common 86er clears 819mm and the 73er clears 694mm. France sells 63, 73, 83 and 93cm blocks, losing roughly 30mm to the frame, and 73cm is the commonest door in a flat. Spain quotes the passage itself, at 62.5, 72.5 or 82.5cm. Not one of those clears a three seater lying flat, which is why you measure the route and not just the room.
EU edition: European doorway widths, European delivery and lead time data, national VAT running from 17 per cent in Luxembourg to 27 in Hungary, and cancellation rights under the Consumer Rights Directive as implemented in your member state. Prices in euros.
Every chapter ends in something you can act on, including a budget worksheet and an ordering worksheet with a column for the two dates that decide everything: needed by, and order by.
Format: PDF, 36 pages, A4. Instant download after purchase.
Three or four guides,
one download.
Each set is one ZIP file of full 36-page guides, the same editions sold on their own, with nothing cut. Pick the set that matches the job in front of you.
The Renovation Set
Where the money returns, how the job runs, and the two rooms that cost the most.
See the set 4 guides · 144 pagesThe Design Set
How a home looks and how it works: colour, the design process, ergonomics and a child's room.
See the set 3 guides · 108 pagesSetting Up a Home
What to buy and in what order, a rented flat you cannot change much, and a room to work in.
See the setOne system, twelve subjects.
Each volume follows the same structure: eleven chapters, thirty-six pages, and every chapter ending in something you can act on.
Numbers, not vibes
Clearances in centimetres, contingency percentages, extract rates, colour temperatures and lead times. The figures you need to check a quote or brief a trade.
Written to real standards
Where regulations apply we cite them properly, and the UK and EU editions reference the standards that actually apply where you live.
Checklists and worksheets
Every chapter ends in something usable, and every guide finishes with a printable planner that puts the whole project on one sheet.
Honest about limits
Where the evidence is mixed we say so, and where popular claims run past the research we say that too. It is more useful than confidence.
What do I actually get?
A PDF, 36 pages, A4. A download link arrives by email straight after checkout. Read it on any device or print it at home. There is no subscription and no account to create.
Why are some guides UK and EU and others not?
Ten of the twelve deal with regulations, contracts, currency or standards that differ by country. On this site you get the EU editions, citing EN and IEC standards and national regulations. Colour and Ergonomics do not, because colour behaves the same everywhere and so do human bodies. Those two are single editions.
Are these written by a designer?
Yes. They are written by Studio Akiva, an award-winning London interior design studio, drawing on current published research and standards as well as our own project experience. Where we cite a figure, it comes from named research or a published standard.
Which one should I start with?
Use the selector above. If you are at the very beginning of a project, Vol. 01 then Vol. 02 is the usual route. If you are furnishing rather than building, Vol. 06 and Vol. 03. If you rent, Vol. 10. If there are two of you and you do not agree, Vol. 12.
Can I print them?
Yes. They are designed at A4 and several chapters end in worksheets and checklists intended to be printed, filled in and pinned up.
Would you rather we did it?
Studio Akiva is an award-winning London interior design studio and a twelve-time Houzz award winner. If you would like your project designed, drawn or simply talked through, book a free fifteen-minute discovery call.